A vortex of realtime webcam images of faces on a
computer screen sorted so that you are looking at
everyone and everyone is looking at you, so that it
estimates a social setting where everyone is looking at
everyone else - so that the intricacies of eye contact and
response can be documented
and measured, and/or
augmented.

The webcam images could be sortable according to
keyword search criteria, social
networking information or criteria like who has their
eyes closed to the cam, or who scores highest on a
distributed rating system.

This idea comes out of a lot of time spent standing in
the
far end of a subway car, at the end of the aisle looking
down the car so that my visual
field
is pretty evenly filled up with peripheral eye contact, and
noticing that this creates a visual network that is pretty
responive -- so when you blink, it creates a liquid swirl
of
activity in the form of other blinks, head turns,
scratches
etc.

So if you could have a computer screen, or even better a
virtual reality made up of only realtime videos of eyes,
or
faces, or realtime images that are selected based on an
algorithm that changes in real time according to your
input, either automatically or according to search
criteria,
well who knows what would come out of it. And then you
could record it and use the data to create data
visualizations, and to augment the reality, to either
teach
people to notice what they otherwise weren't or to just
play.